er shoulders.

"How's my lamb?" she asked tenderly of Maida.

"Oh, pretty well," Maida said dully. "Oh, Granny," she added with a
sudden flare of enthusiasm, "I saw the cunningest little shop. I
think I'd rather tend shop than do anything else in the world."

Billy Potter smiled all over his pink face. He followed Mr.
Westabrook and Dr. Pierce into the drawing-room.

----------------------

Maida went upstairs with Granny Flynn.

Granny Flynn had come straight to the Westabrook house from the boat
that brought her from Ireland years ago. She had come to America in
search of a runaway daughter but she had never found her. She had
helped to nurse Maida's mother in the illness of which she died and
she had always taken such care of Maida herself that Maida loved her
dearly. Sometimes when they were alone, Maida would call her "Dame,"
because, she said, "Granny looks just like the 'Dame' who comes into
fairy-tales."

Granny Flynn was very little, very bent, very old. "A t'ousand and
noine, sure," she always answered when Maida asked her how old. Her
skin had cracked into a hundred wrinkles and her long sharp nose and
her short sharp chin almost met. But the wrinkles surrounded a pair
of eyes that were a twinkling, youthful blue. And her down-turned
nose and up-growing chin could not conceal or mar the lovely
sweetness of her smile.

Just before Maida went to bed that night, she was surprised by a
visit from her father.

"Posie," he said, sitting down on her bed, "did you really mean it
to-day when you said you would like to keep a little shop?"

"Oh, yes, father! I've been thinking it over ever since I came home
from our ride this afternoon. A little shop, you know, just like the
one we saw to-day."

"Very well, dear, you shall keep a shop. You shall keep that very
one. I'm going to buy out the business for you and put you in charge
there. I've got to be in New York pretty steadily for the next three
months and I've decided that I'll send you and Granny to live in the
rooms over the shop. I'll fix the place all up for you, give you
plenty of money to stock it and then I expect you to run it and make
it pay."

Maida sat up in bed with a vigor that surprised her father. She
shook her hands--a gesture that, with her, meant great delight. She
laughed. It was the first time in months that a happy note had
pealed in her laughter. "Oh, father, dear, how good you are to me!
I'm just crazy to